The Cross-Disciple Pirates and the Canon of Test Techniques

I used to consider incorporating techniques from other disciplines into testing as something a little different. It felt right, but since the ‘industry’ didn’t do that, it seemed like a way of individually revealing our personal approach to testing.

But testing has a secret history. The building of the Traditional Testing Canon has remained shrouded in mystery until now. So for all testers following tradition, set yourself free, continue to follow Tradition, just follow the one true one. As I reveal here as “Thee True And Aythentic Historee of Software Testing - A tale of Action and Adventure”.

Consider a Traditional Testing Canon (say each of these in an authoritative voice):

State Transition Analysis

Path Analysis

Data Flow Testing

Boundary Value Analysis

Equivalence Classes

Domain Analysis

Decision Tables

Classification Trees

Use Case Testing

Orthogonal Array Testing

The ‘canon’ will categorise these in different ways – structural, functional, non-functional, etc. But we can ignore all that stuff.

So where would I go to learn these ‘things’? Books from the late 80s (Software Testing Techniques, by Beizer), the mid-90s (Software Testing – A Craftsman’s Approach by Jorgensen), and on, and on, and on. At least 20 years of the same stuff in Software Testing books and Certification Schemes.